My point is based on a principle which I believe to be true. It is one you ought to appreciate. The principle is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Certain things have certain costs, and if they are not paid in one way, they will have to be paid in another.
One way is to have lower taxes and to keep more money at home while at the same time neglecting social expenditure that can no longer be afforded. The result is more poverty, more desperation, more deprivation, more crime, general social disintegration. You no longer dare to walk the streets of your neighbourhood. Your children are subjected to attacks at school. Your house gets burgled every week. There are no police because there are no public funds to pay them. Your standard of living declines, even though you do have more money.
Another approach is to pay more up front so that these kinds of social costs do not accumulate. There is then no need to build expensive prisons after the damage has been done. Your taxes are higher, but homelessness, extreme poverty, desperation robberies, violence stemming from a sense of hopelessness, frustration and impotence, a general lowering of social standards, all these things are greatly reduced. You pay more one way to avoid paying more the other. This seems to be what the Finnish experience says.
Is that true? I don't know. What I do know is that we already have the homelessness, the high prison rate, the deprivation, the robberies and burglaries and other crime. Maybe it is time to try something else.